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patrons it still looked like a genuine arse-over-tits mistake - mainly Peter and Seamus's, of course.
There was Seamus in the middle of his speech and . . .
Oops, no more words.
A pause. Then I held up the wrong words . ..
Which he started to read . . .
Oops.
So he stopped.
And it was suddenly Seamus's turn to look mute and Alice Cooper Hey-hey hey-hey hey-stoopid in front of eighty people. Uh-duh.
To cover my tracks, earlier in the day I'd changed the numbers on the cue cards. Afterwards Stacey-May and the counsellors read it as Peter and Seamus's mix-up. I, the hard-working Brit Stage Manager come-good, was entirely blameless to them, but not to Seamus. When the pair of them died on stage I can tell you he held his arm out, made a gun of his fingers, pointed it at me, and pulled the trigger.
As if you need to be told - he meant it wasn't over by a long shot. That's what happens with these feudal things. Tit follows tat follows tit and so on. The UFF teach you the only thing you can do is get your tit or tat in when the opportunity presents itself. Either that or you kill the Fenian fucker right from the off.
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lO
Shenanigans
The only other people to know what I'd done to Peter and Seamus apart from those two were Phil and Derry.
On a post-concert high, Phil waxed guitar-lick lyrical about it: 'I'd go so far as to compare it to Eddie Van Halen's Explosion dude - it was perfect!'
Derry's praise was more . . . what's the word, understated. Words weren't used. There was just this change in his attitude towards me. See, Phil had told him a bit about what'd happened with Seamus on the plane, and so he knew what I was at. And I guess he must have liked the fact I didn't take any shite, even if I was small and annoying, because we got on better after that, not exactly like an American wooden house on fire, but better.
You know I really enjoyed the Family Day after the concert. It was a Friday if memory serves me right. Mom Horrowitz was out shopping with Tiara (where else would two women be?) and the Rev was out ministering to the needs of the chosen few. So what'd me and Derry do with this time and space? Not much in total. We sat around and watched a couple of TV movies on cable. We tried to fix Suzi together but failed. And in the afternoon - at Derry's insistence I might add - we discussed in some considerable detail why all Taigs should be hated because they're alway trying to find out if you're a Taig, and if you're not, they act like you're one of the damned or
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something. I mean the lengths they go to just to find out -they'll speak to you in Gaelic, they'll try talking about the latest Hurley or Gaelic Games results, they'll ask you what school you go to, they'll even see how you pronounce the letter 'H'. I mean Jesus H Christ!
Derry listened to me spouting off, and I mean he listened, took it all in, and then, when he'd had his fill of my love/hate he made us peanut-butter-and-jello sandwiches. We gorbed the junk food in the kitchen and then for some reason we got to talking about the technique of necking girls with metal mouths (I think he was trying to boast about snogging a girl from his school called Anne who'd braces). When we'd finished arguing the pros and cons, and I definitely thought there were more cons than pros, he said, 'You want to hear some Metal?'
'Yeah,' I said. I could do a pretty mean impression of Derry's 'Yeah' by now. In fact, my accent was fast becoming the twangy-slangy, over-nasal nightmare of a Wisconsin native - or should I say a Wisconsin settler, because Americans aren't really natives of America at all. They're like us Prods in Ulster. Occupier-owners, who've stolen the land from conquered tribes like the Algonquin Indians.
Derry got this plain-sleeved record from upstairs and stuck it on the deck of the Rev's hi-fi. 'What is it?' I asked.
'Pops says it's sonic devil worship,' he said, and cranked the volume up.
What was it? Black Sabbath with Ozzy of course. We started with Paranoid and head-banged our way through the whole album.
Later when we were both sitting down recovering from brain damage and stiff necks and fingers cramped by air guitar, the phone rang.
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Derry got it, 'Yeah?'
I could hear the tin-thin voice on the line. 'Hi, is that Derry?' 'Yeah.'
'Hi, it's Kelly from the Project here. Could I speak to Wil?' 'Yeah.'
Derry threw me the phone - it was on one of those extended curly-cords so I just about caught it before it recoiled.
'Yeah?' I said.
'Wil, it's me Kelly. I'm throwing a pool party at seven tonight and Teresa and I'd like it if you two could come over? Say you will?'
'Who's going?'
'All the people we wanted to invite,' she said. 'OK,' I said.
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1
II
In Nature's Way
Come seven the Rev elected to drive Derry and me to the party in his pride and joy. 'You like my van, Wil?' he said to me as we pulled out of the manse grounds at high speed.
'Sure do,' I said. I think if I'd been honest and said, Nah, your van looks like a gay cream version of The A-Team's, there was a strong possibility he would have pulled over and told me to sling my hook back to Ulster. Yeah, the Rev struck me as the kind of man who seriously dug his van. Woe betide any man or boy who slagged off his wheels.
'Sorry I haven't been able to give you guys much time as yet,' the Rev said.
'That's OK, Pops,' I said. 'My Da never has any time either.' Yeah you're right - I was trying to give him the classic neglected son guilt-trip. And he bought it. At that moment the Rev became the archetypal father figure who realises how disappointing he is to the archetypal son figure and regrets all the stuff that could have been said or done better.
'I was just thinking,' the Rev said. 'How about I take you guys out for a burger at Rancheros tomorrow night?'
'How's about some range time too?' asked Derry, cashing in on the opportunity like a pro.
'Range time?' I said, trying to sound innocent.
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'Shooting,' Derry replied. 'At the gun club.' 'If you're sure he's up to it,' said the Rev, nodding back at me.
'I am,' I said. Little did the pair of them know I had already been to four UFF training camps. I had been trained by terrorists to live-fire a Colt .45 Automatic and an AK-47. But I couldn't very well tell the Rev and Derry I was what Alco and the instructor called 'a Natural', could I?
'OK son,' said the Rev. 'Can do, if not tomorrow then real soon.'
I hope you don't start thinking I was a manipulative kid or something because of what I did to the Rev. Or Derry either. It's the oldest trick us sons have. Every boy does it, or tries to anyway. It never worked on my Da until he and Ma got the divorce papers signed. I have to say them divorce papers gave me a lot of scope to manipulate him alright. If I asked him for money he'd fork out, whereas before he'd just have given me the evil eye. Yeah, divorce may have turned my Da into a lousy good-for-nothing husband as Ma said but, he became a better Da out of it.
I have this theory that the change in his behaviour was down to competition, unhealthy competition between him and my Ma for the best of my love. Da, the patriarchal animus of Ulster, just had to win, to try harder than he had before. He knew it was a losing battle but he'd fight to the bitter end just to spite her. See, boys always love their Ma best. It's practice for loving their mate later in life, isn't it? I was no different. I think it was Freud who said, 'AH neurotics are either Oedipus or Hamlet.' Well we know by now I was no Hamlet. Even if Da had died at the hands of a Taig I wouldn't have venerated him, and I sure as hell wouldn't have cursed Ma as a dirty whore if she'd married again.
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We got to the pool party at eight. We were like the first and only ones there, which was cool because Kelly and Teresa made a right fuss of us.
Teresa even took me by the hand and led me in. In my Lights-Out fantasies, in the everlasting Void of my cell, I still remember and celebrate th
e tingle of her touch in my palm.
'Have you got your trunks?' said Kelly when we were pool-side.
'We do indeed, like,' answered Derry for us. Now, I want to point out that whereas he said this in his normal nasal Wisconsin twang, the syntax is straight from Ulster.
'Put them on here,' Kelly said. 'We won't look at you if you don't look at us.' She stripped off her T-shirt and mini-skirt and was suddenly almost bare naked in a bikini. I couldn't stop myself staring again at the curves and cracks of this motherly virgin's body.
'Kelly!' scolded Teresa, 'You two can use the toilet to change. It's in here. I'll show you.'
In most of the United States the legal age for drinking alcohol is twenty-one. The only reasons we were able to get drunk was because Kelly's parents had gone away for a night of 'serious doinking' as Kelly put it and, Kelly's elder sister, who was supposed to be babysitting us, had gone out to smoke some dope with her jock boyfriend.
I'd been drinking since I was twelve so it was nothing new but I'd always heard that you shouldn't drink and swim. I was a bit paranoid about it.
'We'll not get cramps or anything will we?' I said.
'Of course not,' said Kelly.
She was right. Not swimming would have defeated the whole purpose of the pool party so, we all ignored my warning. We gagged a whole bottle of Jack D diluted
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with a whole two litres of K-Mart Diet Cola between the four of us. Things were going great. I know it's soppy but the hard liquor and Teresa so near made me feel so warm inside I never even once felt the chill of the pool.
Teresa took off her sopping wet white T-shirt after a few drinks. She slopped it on the paving, laughed and said, 'I wonder what the nuns would say if they saw me now.'
Kelly told her, 'They'd call you a slut.'
Teresa just floated there in her bikini, laughed, and then kissed me right on the mush, thrusting her tongue in to meet mine.
Needless to say that was the first time I had snogged or necked or kissed a Taig. It wasn't my first kiss by a long shot - I'd had a go at some of the estate girls back home -but it was my first real kissing session. What with all that hard-pressed tongue-knackering tonsil-hockey I felt like a man.
I got carried away. We both did. But not in the way you're thinking. See I didn't know what a gooseberry was, let alone that the other two would feel like that, all left out, you know, like? I wish I had, and then maybe Kelly wouldn't have made a move on Derry too, and maybe Derry wouldn't have said, 'Get off, I don't want to neck with no Taig!'
'What did you just say to me, buster?' yelled hell-hath-no-fury Kelly and thrashed in the water.
'You heard me,' Derry the Hulk shouted back.
'You called me a Taig.' Kelly was nearly in hysterics. 'He called me a Taig, Teresa!'
Teresa and me stopped necking. She cramped up just when I had my face in her neck and could feel her nipples like bullets on my chest. Taig you see. That just about did it. Derry sunk us but I got the blame of course.
I can't dispute it and won't now. Teresa's argument
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was sound: 'How else would Derry know what the word Taig means, let alone to use it, if you hadn't coached him, Wil?'
What could I say? I felt like I was sinking, drowning in the pool. Alcohol and swimming and necking didn't mix. I should have listened to my own warning.
'The Project is supposed to be about peace and reconciliation, Wil,' Teresa said. 'These people are supposed to be teaching us how to live together, not the other way around.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
And that's all I was allowed to say. They kicked us out. They threw our clothes out the front door at us and we had to leave, in our swimming trunks. It was only ten o'clock. We were drunk and honking of drink. We couldn't phone home for a lift. How could we explain what had happened? We'd have had to walk miles and miles to get back to New Berlin, in wet ucksters and everything; that is, if Derry hadn't come up with a scheme to get his sister Tiara to come get us.
See, Derry had this ace up his sleeve. That spring, while he was out on Suzi he came across his sister giving head to her current boyfriend in the fields behind the manse. Afterwards he'd taken care not to mention blow jobs in their polite conversations, not even once, but that was because he hadn't needed to. I remember him telling me something like, 'There's always a time when you need an ace to make people do things for you. Especially sisters.'
So we phoned Tiara's boyfriend's house from a payphone. When it became clear Tiara was not going to come to collect us out of sisterly love, Derry dealt his ace over the phone, 'If you don't come and get me I'll have to spit it out - like you did with Brad.'
'You wouldn't,' I heard her say.
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'Try me,' he said.
'You little shit,' she shouted down the phone. 'I'm going to get you for this, you Httle shit.'
And Tiara was to be as good as her word. If only we hadn't blackmailed her into picking us up that night maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't have got in the way of our mission. Yeah, I can't help thinking that Derry's ace was The Ace of Spades, The Ace of Spades for the both of us.
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12
Playboy of the Western World
The day of mourning after the night before began with hangover hell. When we'd got in that night I'd dropped a dose of Paracetemol, but no joy. I was stuck with the pain. It seemed to come from my head, and my heart; ah, it came from all over.
I don't think it was the Jack D that was hurting me though; it was because I had blown it, big-time. I just kept thinking that whatever was hidden behind the windows to Teresa's soul was gone, beyond my reach, and I would be left alone for ever.
Over a late brunch, which for me was about a gallon of black coffee, Derry said, 'I'm sorry.'
'It's all right,' I said. I didn't blame him. 'Taig' was my own fault, or so I thought back then. But I know now that that behaviour, that sectarian defence mechanism, wasn't really my fault. It was my parents' fault. It was society's fault. It was love's fault.
It must have been getting on for two on that really seriously hot Saturday when Derry thought he'd help me out of it: hanging over the Void, that is. He brought me up to the empty room upstairs, poked about a bit under his bed and handed me a magazine. Playboy. And then he said, 'Pull your pud. It'll make you feel a whole lot better.'
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I opened what we called a Dirty Mag back home and flicked through to the centrefold - who was incredible. Debbie, her name was. She had these melon tits and a heart-shaped arse to die for. And I think she'd shaved her golden pubes into a little come-get-it-here arrow too.
'There's some tissues in the drawer,' said Derry at the door. 'Just don't get the fucking pages stuck together, OK.'
I had a wank as instructed. And it did make me feel better - once I'd cleaned up. I triple-checked Debbie for stains. There were none, so I stuffed her back under Derry's bed and went to find her secretive admirer.
Derry was out on the manse's back-porch drinking his Mom's Koolade. 'Porn again,' he said. 'Have a drink.'
'Thanks,' I said and poured myself one.
We sat for a while and sweated in the sun, then he said, 'You don't need her.'
'Yeah,' I said.
Porn again I was.
And I got to thinking I didn't need Teresa when I could have beautiful Porky's girls like Debbie anytime anyplace anywhere . . . ?
But then again, maybe that's not true. Nah, that's not right. What I'm trying to say is, I got to thinking I could have Porky's girls like Debbie anytime anyway anyhow . . . ?
Yeah. That's it. And what's more, I thought, I could have one of them girls without her permission. And even if I called her a Taig. And I could still be me too, so I wouldn't be losing or betraying my own sense of identity.
Thing is, what with all this thinking, and some more wanking that Family Day, I almost convinced myself, but not quite.
I'd like to say that I didn't become converted because
I
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already knew that porn is the very representation of violent love, that it teaches you all the worst things: passivity, dissociation, objectification, projection, intro-jection, splitting, denial, mystification and sexual repression.
Yeah, I'd like you to believe that I knew all about these things and why they're the worst: namely, because they're the very intrapersonal and transpersonal processes that society uses to negate the experience of the individual human being. But, it wasn't that.
Thing was, I still wanted Teresa no matter how much porno jerking-off I did.
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13
Two Churches
Services were the order of Sunday for the Horrowitz-z-zs.
I have to admit Rev Horrowitz wasn't a bad preacher as preachers go, but I didn't pay much heed to his sermonising. Part of my inattention was to do with the fact that he was a Presbyterian and I was a Baptist and I didn't want him and his alternative religion messing with my mind. But in the main it was because I'd heard it all before. God is love. Yadda-yadda.
If I had known then what I know now I would have stood up and given the congregation my own sermon. It would have gone something like - Yeah, I agree God is love! But love isn't patient and kind like you think, it's group-minded violence. And religion is a protection racket just like the family and society. And the group mind, phenomenologically speaking, is God. And God's love is the violent love of the Father, the Patriarch. So rebel, sons and daughters of God, rebel against His love.
Derry didn't pay much attention to his Pops rattling on about God being love either. He was sitting next to me on the bum-numbing pew, half asleep. I had to nudge him awake to sing the hymns. He didn't like that but he got up to mime along with me.
When the first service was over, we were driven straight across New Berlin to the other church where Rev
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Horrowitz preached more or less the same service to that congregation. I don't think the second sermon about God being love and all carried as much conviction though because Derry actually fell asleep in that one and I let him sleep.
Simon Kerr Page 5